


An Embrace

by SweetSamOfMine (AudreeJo)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 10.14, Angst, Brother Feels, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode Tag, Episode: s10e14, Gen, Mark of Cain, POV Dean Winchester, brother hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-13 17:25:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3390032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AudreeJo/pseuds/SweetSamOfMine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean stumbles out of a battle with Cain and into his brother's arms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Embrace

**Author's Note:**

> Because I've been dying [over this scene](http://exbloodjunkie.tumblr.com/post/111346666444) since I saw it.

Dean stumbled out of the sliding door, Blade gripped tight, shaking as the Mark worked with it as it was always meant to. Dean had forgotten what it had felt like to hold it and use it. His heart raced like it was in competition with the bloody jawbone vibrating in in his hand.

But it wasn’t his craving that caused the pounding in his chest, not this time. He’d been jonesing for another hit with the Blade for months. He was certain he wouldn’t walk out of that fight with Cain —having used the thing, having given into it to take that son of a bitch down— the same way he walked in. He was right about that, but it wasn’t the supernatural that had shaken him to the core.

_“The murder you’d never survive.”_

He could still hear Cain’s voice in his icy whisper.

_“Your brother, Sam.”_

As Dean limped down the stairs, the taste of blood breaking through the numbness of his shock, he saw Sam nearly lunge towards him but Dean kept his eye on the King of Hell. Dean thought he heard Sam say his name, but all his senses were dazed and kind of dulled. His eyes faltered towards his brother just for a second. _Breathe in,_ _dammit_ , he told himself. He couldn’t look at Sam. He knew he was too weak to look at him. _Keep it together._

Dean’s unsteady hand extended the Blade to Castiel. He felt their eyes on him, how still they were as he tottered on his feet. He knew they wondered if he was a bomb set to explode at any moment. Would he detonate or not?

“Put this some place safe,” he instructed the angel in a tired rasp.

_Really fucking far away._

The feel of the Blade going through Cain’s body still hung on Dean’s limbs. He felt the sensation of it piercing through skin as it opened a wound, draining life from his victim. It was all part of owning the Mark, the aftershocks of a good kill, the cycle of the high settling down into another deep craving, a stronger craving. Dean’s stomach turned as Castiel accepted the Blade. If Cain was right, one day he’d feel this same sensation after attacking Sam, yet his body still called out for the thing, the very thing that would destroy he and Sam, both.

_“Tell me I don’t have to do this! Tell me you can stop!”  
“I will never stop.”_

Bile rose in Dean’s throat. He felt tears sting his eyes, the salt burning the cut high up on his left cheek.

Crowley’s complaint, something about being lied to, jerked Dean from these thoughts. He cleared his throat and slurred some generic snark at the King of Hell as his head swam. Nothing was in focus, it was all a blur. His sight, his thoughts, his feelings, the destiny he was careening towards. Cain was gone, the only link to the roots of the Mark. This was a dead end, there was no erasing it, there was no way out. Any hope he held for getting rid of it that way was bleeding out upstairs, in the barn. Cain had said the story must end with Sam dying and at Dean’s hand.

Without thinking his dazed eyes landed on Sam. Despite the shame and dread and guilt, his eyes found his brother’s face and clung to it like it was the only thing tethering him to reality. Then, the fatigue in his body caught up with the mess in his head, and like he had been pushed, Dean felt his knees give out, but before he even felt himself fall forward at all, he was in Sam’s arms. It had been just a second of weakness, but his little brother had caught him, lifted him, repeated hushed reassurance into his ear.

“You did it, Dean. You did it.”

And Dean didn’t straighten up or back away. He was spent in every way, and he let himself hang there leaning against his brother. His instincts screamed at him to put on a strong face and pretend he was fine, but he couldn’t muster the strength. His worst nightmare had been set into motion. He was shattered.  No more hardened mask, he couldn’t do it.

Bile inched it’s way forward again. Dean sat in Sam’s arms, being consoled by the most important person in his life, the person who had no idea he was comforting his future murderer.

Everything was as fucked up as it could possibly be, so Dean leaned his head against his brother’s shoulder and he let Sam lift him up, let him encompass him, let him tell him he did a good job.


End file.
